With the rapid development of Internet services and the extensive application of broadband access networks and wireless networks, high-speed and easily accessed networks are drawing wide attention. Users need high-speed, convenient, and low-cost hand-held wireless equipments to enjoy wireless data services. Meanwhile, with the ever increasing of users of 3rd Generation (3-G) and ever deepening study on Long Term Evolution (LTE), as a typical representative of private NodeBs, an HNB or an Access Point (AP) is drawing more and more interests. The HNB refers to a miniaturized NodeB for Home or office, and it may be completely private, or can also be open to public with different priorities or authorities that are set. It is privately owned but not owned by the government or operators, and its target uses may be a small range of users, or may be a wide range of users.
In existing technical solutions, when user equipment (UE) accesses to the HNB and is authorized by the HNB, the HNB needs to send a registration message of the UE to an HNB GW, and the HNB GW will assign and reserve corresponding Iuh Interface resources for the UE, which are known as pre-registration resources, such as UE Context ID (which identifies a signaling connection of the UE on the Iuh interface). The corresponding Iuh interface resources remain valid until the HNB finds that the UE moves out of the coverage of the HNB. After that, the HNB releases the assigned pre-registration resource for the UE, and sends a de-register message of the UE to notify the HNB GW that the HNB GW shall release the assigned pre-registration resources for the UE.
During implementing the present invention, the inventor found that the existing UE de-registration procedure is initiated only by the HNB, and if the HNB does not receive any information of the UE within a Location Area Update (LAU) period, the HNB determines that the UE has moved out of the coverage of the HNB, and needs to send a de-register request message and clear pre-registration resources.
If the LAU period is set relatively long, the HNB generally cannot detect the movement of the UE at the first time when the UE in an idle or Cell_PCH state moves to another cell, and therefore will not initiate the de-registration procedure in time. Therefore, within a very long LAU period, the pre-registration resources including the UE Context ID on the HNB and the HNB GW are reserved even though the UE has moved to another cell, resulting in waste of resources.
If the LAU period is set relatively short, a UE falling within the HNB will frequently send LAU messages to the HNB, causing waste of resources, reducing frequency utilization efficiency, and increasing the power consumption of the UE.